A Murder of Crows - Diabolische Versuchung

I love legal thriller/mystery movies, and Murder of Crows was one of the best ones I've seen. Cuba Gooding plays a lawyer down on his luck who decides to write a book. His character in the movie mentioned John Grisham, which I thought was funny because I had just been comparing the movie plot to the way John Grisham writes. I was surprised and intrigued by Tom Berenger - he made quiet a convincing investigator. I think he would have been better cast as the main character.

This is one of those gimmicky plotted,elegantly produced movies that can be fun to watch if you go with the flow and don't dwell too much on the implausibilities.

Cuba Gooding is a lawyer who has a fit of conscientiousness and promptly gets disbarred. He travels to Key West and becomes friends with a retired Englishman who gives him the manuscript of a novel and asks for an opinion. The Englishman is found dead. Gooding decides to publish the novel as his own and then the fun begins.

Gooding has an engaging personality but his acting leaves something to be desired, his name is on the credits as producer (which in Hollywood can either mean a lot or nothing at all) so we would assume that he had read the script, but it doesn't always seem that way. He sometimes seems to be acting from off stage cues with his mannerisms at variance with the mood of the scene. In one scene, for no reason at all, he looks down at floor then shuffles his feet to another position as though he has just been told he is standing in the wrong spot.

The plot takes some not always credible twists and turns and we get that hackneyed scene where for no plausible reason the protagonist makes a run for it. In this case Gooding makes a surprisingly easy escape from a house swarming with cops, then of course we get the chance to visit some nicely photographed locations and to meet some quirky characters.

Tom Berenger does best in the acting department as a surly cop. He also has some of the best lines. He refuses a drink at one point with a terse "I never drink. It makes me feel happy."

Mainly for Berenger's performance and some nifty locations I give it 7 out of 10.

Really like this film, it's criminally overlooked as far as I'm concerned. Cuba Gooding plays a lawyer who gets disbarred shortly after he lets his conscience get the better of him and he moves to Key West Florida, hoping to start a writing career. Once there, he meets and old man who happens to have written a damn fine novel. Ahhh, I don't want to reveal more, but from that point on things get very interesting.

This thriller has a genuinely original plot and is very well written. The plot twist isn't easily spotted and will definitely have viewers guessing for a long time. It's fast paced and well directed by Rowdy Herrington, who's really a director to look for (made another little known James Spader flick that's very good as well).

I've always like Cuba Gooding and he does a good job in the lead, proving he can well handle dramatic parts as well (if not better) than comedic ones. Tom Berenger does well, as always, in a relatively small part as a tough detective.

It's a rare thing these days that a film, particularly a thriller, comes up with a really fresh and original idea and executes it well. A Murder of Crows is a suspenseful and thoroughly entertaining thriller that deserves to be better known.

I rented this movie having never heard of it or Rowdy Herrington. I became an instant fan. The film is very good and so is the script. I admit to having figured it out but that was part of the fun. It's not a huge film starring Michael Douglas and budgeted by Warners but so often one rents a film that looks promising and it's simply awful. This was quite good and probably should have gotten more attention at the time it was released (if it indeed was released to theaters, which it should have been).

I liked Rowdy Herrington's movie for several reasons. There's a clever plot which has noirish and occult overtones, but which ultimately settles into the mystery genre (if it has to be allocated any). The scenario adopts a critical, post-OJ attitude towards criminal lawyers; but then there's a nice ironic twist at the end. There's good use of atmospheric (if a little hackneyed) New Orleans and Florida Keys locations. And for once there's an African-American in a leading role (Cuba Gooding Jr), with hardly any comment on it in the movie - apart from Eric Stoltz's unpleasant Southern rich guy referring to him as "boy".

To discuss the plot at all would reduce the fun for anyone who hasn't seen the movie. Yes, it's contrived and implausible, but only as much as you would expect in a movie of this kind. To those IMDb commenters, who didn't like the movie because Gooding's character does some dumb things, I would simply ask - where's the rule that says the main character has to be smart and have good judgment? Someone else has pointed out that the moral of the film is the simple "Honesty is the best policy"; but I think it adds the cynical words "except when you're on a murder rap"!